[Reader-list] World Bank City

[Zainab Bawa]

19th November 2004
VT Railway Station

These days, my attention has shifted to the Insides of VT railway Station. 
By now, it seems clear to me that VT is the world’s most grand railway 
station. Its grandeur lies in two aspects:
a.	The fact that it caters to over 32 lakh passengers daily
b.	The building itself which is the world’s only functional administrative 
building declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO

I have been holding conversations concerning VT with various kinds of people 
and it is a wonder how the station has undergone changes with time. Last 
week, my neighbour spoke to me about how VT station has become a privatized 
entity where every service has been contracted out including the sweepers – 
‘the age of liberalization’ as he remarked. This afternoon, I discovered 
that even the boot polish personnel are contracted out and they pay a rent 
for the space which is leased out to them. Gradually, railway stations in 
Mumbai are becoming contracted entities. The railway station space was 
earlier a space for hawkers and encroachments. Today, the authorities have 
recognized the value (monetary) of the station space and have leased out 
various inches and centimeters of the space in an effort to earn revenue. 
Therefore, while pondering over VT station, I realized today that we are 
living in an era of World Bank cities where infrastructure policies and 
rules concerning ‘management’ of the city are dictated by the terms and 
conditions which come along with the various World Bank loans. A World Bank 
city in my imagination is an institutionalized and structuralized city – a 
city where everything ‘should’ be in order, where diversity is curtailed 
through various rules and regulations. I don’t know whether World Bank 
imagines the everyday and the everydayness like some of us do, but then, 
it’s all about the money baby! Show me the money and we’ll do as you please 
Sirrrrrrrrrrrr!

Certain changes have come about inside the station. There are outsiders even 
inside the station, as a station personnel pointed out to me, “The Pepsi, 
Coke and the Coffee Fountains are outsiders.” He said in context of the fact 
that the rest of the refreshments counters and stalls inside the Railway 
Station are part of the Railway Canteen Management. Thus, our multinationals 
are seen as ‘outsiders’!

Areas and authorities are clearly demarcated and practiced in and around VT 
station. Thus, while the station authorities have the permission to evict 
hawkers inside the station, they cannot do anything to the hawkers 
immediately outside the station because that boundary is then of the BMC.

Talk about VT to people who truly understand its historical and aesthetic 
value and the immediate responses point out to the role of the railways in 
spoiling it. As I have been talking to people and finding out their 
perceptions concerning VT and Churchgate Railway Stations, I myself perceive 
that VT is a bureaucratic institution where permission is the order of the 
day while Churchgate is the express service, symbolizing the age of 
globalization and liberalization and the management paradigm of governing 
the city. Perhaps VT is bound by its own limitations, the fact that it is a 
Grade I Heritage Building, the fact that it also embodies in its self the 
outstation railway station and therefore the fears, anxieties and 
perspectives of terror, bombing, smuggling, etc.

While I write about VT, I am amazed by the boundaries and demarcation of 
authorities that operate within the area – you have the railway authorities, 
the police, the GRP and the RPF and the baap of all i.e. the BMC. You also 
have the illegal entities i.e. the hawkers, which become legalized or at 
least justified by the consumers and purchasers. It’s complex dynamics man!

Inside the station as well, as I have always pointed out earlier, 
territories are marled. This afternoon, in a conversation with a boot polish 
guy, he mentioned that he is at VT since the last 15 years and is here 
because his father was also here. When I had started talking to Santhya, he 
also mentioned to me that his uncles have always been at Nariman Point and 
hence he is also here. Hawkers have their own practices of territory and 
family inheritance. I am both amused and intrigued by how the process of 
property is actually one of inheritance and legitimate transfers. Perhaps 
because of this practice of inheritance by the hawkers that the city’s 
influential are irked. How can space, which belongs to none, be used by some 
‘outsiders’ (the hawker being the outsider)? And what is most objected to is 
the tragedy of the commons which takes place in the case of free commons. 
Again, you may object to the issue of free commons when it comes to 
outsiders and aliens, particularly the poor, but when the practice of free 
commons is done by industries and corporations, by legalized networks, then 
you hail it in the name of development!

Making my way through urban complexities …



Zainab Bawa
Mumbai
www.xanga.com/CityBytes

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